xiii, 194 pages ; 20 cm

Amid all the hand-wringing about the loss of community in America these days, here is a book that celebrates the ability of neighborhoods to heal from within. John McKnight tells how the experts' best efforts to rebuild and revitalize communities are in fact destroying them. McKnight focuses on four "counterfeiting" aspects of society: professionalism, medicine, human service systems, and the criminal justice system. Because in many areas the ideological roots of service grow from a religious ideal, the book concludes with a reflection on the idea of Christian service and its transformation into carelessness. Reforming our human service institutions won't work, McKnight writes. These systems do too much, intervene where they are ineffective, and try to substitute service for irreplaceable care. Instead of more or better services, the book demonstrates that the community capacity of the local citizens is the basis for resolving many of America's social problems

Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-184) and index

John Deere and the bereavement counselor -- The professional problem -- The need for oldness -- Professionalized service and disabling help -- The medicalization of politics -- Well-being: the new threshold to the old medicine -- Diagnosis and the health of community -- Politicizing health care -- A nation of clients? -- Do no harm -- Redefining community -- A reconsideration of the crisis of the welfare state -- Thinking about crime, sacrifice, and community -- Rethinking our national incarceration policy -- Community organizing in the eighties: toward a post-Alinsky agenda / with John Kretzmann -- Regenerating community -- On the backwardness of prophets

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